


Refusing To Be Celebrated

by gremlinquisitor (suchanadorer)



Series: Padi Hawke [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 07:32:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16719058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchanadorer/pseuds/gremlinquisitor
Summary: Despite everything that's happened, the nobility of Kirkwall manage to find time for a party to honor their new Champion. But no one considered whether or not she'd want to go.





	Refusing To Be Celebrated

“Hawke, you can’t stay in there forever.” Varric turns on his heel, not quite pacing in the hallway.

“And yet, here I continue to sit.” Her voice comes to him through the door to her bedroom, where she’d been all day, if Bodahn is to be believed. The untouched tray of food outside is convincing, if nothing else.

“Is Anders in there with you?” He stops, head tilted up to look at the ceiling. Anders isn’t in there. He knows he’s not; he rarely is these days, a fact that Varric is aware of and doing his best to monitor without letting anyone know. 

“No.”

Varric’s head falls forward, and he shakes it. Hawke shouldn’t be alone when she gets like this, and while he doesn’t mind stepping in as her best friend, Anders is leaving too much of this to other people. 

“Where is he?”

A noncommittal noise is all he gets in reply, and it stings more than it should to hear it. She deserves someone to be with her when she needs them most. 

“I should go find him.” He mutters it more to himself than to her.

A sigh, loud enough to be heard through the door. “It’s unlocked, Varric. You can just come in, you know.”

He’d been waiting for a signal, and he’ll take that. “You inviting me into your bedroom, Hawke? People might talk.” He smiles so that it’s audible, letting the little relief he feels warm his voice.

Varric pushes open the door and is surprised to find her lower than eye level. She’s sitting on the floor, leaning against the foot of the bed, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. She has the Viscount’s crown in her lap; a souvenir from the fight with the Arishok, not yet returned as it has yet no rightful owner.

“Neither Orana nor Sandal care who comes and goes in my room,” she replies, glancing up at him and rolling her eyes before looking down at the crown again. 

He’s not sure he believes that, but he lets it lie for the time being. It’s not why he’s here. 

She’s wearing loose brown pants and a pale tunic, long blonde hair braided and hanging over her shoulder. She’s barefoot, toes flexing slightly as she rolls the crown back and forth in her hands, as if testing the weight of it. 

Varric doesn’t have to hold it to know that it’s too heavy for her head.

“You know they’re throwing a party for you today.” He knows she knows, but it’s why he’s there, and probably why Anders is gone, and this is one of those parties where the guest of honor really ought to turn up, even if she will be fashionably late at this point. “I mean, you’re not exactly dressed for it.”

“If I did something good, then why doesn’t it feel like I did something good?” Her voice is small in the space of her bedroom, not even reaching the walls to echo, and he doesn’t know what to tell her. He doesn’t know how to make her see how big her heart is, that it hurts even for the ones she has to kill to keep the city safe.

He sighs, shuffling across the floor to sit down next to her. She leans against him as if it’s the most natural thing on the planet, her head tilted to rest against his.

“You saved the city from the Qunari.”

He feels her shrug. “I didn’t save Saemus. Or his father,” she adds, lifting up the crown to drop it into her lap. “Or my mother. Isabela’s in the wind, and I--” There’s no humor in her laugh. “Right up until the end, I really thought that the Arishok might leave peacefully. I didn’t want him to die.”

“He would’ve killed you,” Varric reminds her, though he doesn’t think she needs it. But he might. She makes good points, even if it’s easy for him to overlook them in favor of seeing the good she does. None of them are perfect, but every day, he sees how she tries. Violence is always her last resort, but they seem to get there faster and faster these days.

Hawke still hasn’t replied, and he doesn’t want her dwelling on the thought of what might have happened with the Arishok. No good will come of her thoughts following that path.

“You sure you don’t want to go to a party? There’s free drinks, food. You’ll be accompanied by Kirkwall’s most eligible bachelor all night.” He nudges her with his elbow, but she continues to rest heavily against his side.

“They want to go gawk at the woman who killed the Arishok. Who let the Viscount die.”

“No,” he replies, bordering on too cheerful. “They want to see more of you, know more about you.”

“They didn’t want to know more when I was a penniless refugee from the Blight. Then they only wanted me gone. They only care because I’m good at killing things. Is that really what makes a Champion?” She punctuates the question by setting the crown rolling away from her. It cuts a clean path across the room before clanging against the wall and falling, wobbling like a coin until it comes to rest.

Hawke pushes herself to her feet to retrieve it, and Varric calls it a small victory. Some days he fails at getting her out of bed; those days will not be in his stories, when he retells them.

He stands as well, but leans back against the bed, not quite sitting.

“What makes a Champion is you, Hawke. Whatever you are, that’s what a Champion is.” Not for the first time, he finds that he completely believes it. He’d known before he met her that there was something special there, and he has yet to be proven wrong. Special isn’t always good. It’s not always the strongest, or the fastest. But it’s there, and she has it.

“I spent a year in this city running bloody errands for nobles and they wouldn’t so much as nod when they passed me on the street. But kill the right person, and they give you a title.” She bends at the waist to pick up the crown as she speaks.

“And a party.”

“And a party,” she repeats, sighing. “Everything that’s happened in this city, and the nobles want to throw a party.”

“You’re interesting! It’s a compliment. It’s…” She’s not going to take it as a compliment, no matter what he tells her. He straightens, walking slowly across the room towards her. “You saved them, and they’re grateful. And I know, you wanted to save the rest of them. You want to save everyone.”

The words are there, on the tip of his tongue. She’s turned to look down at him, crown hanging all but forgotten in one hand. But then her grip on it tightens, and he knows. He can’t tell her that she can’t save them all. It’s all she has to hold onto, and he won’t take it from her.

“But tonight, what do you say we go bother some nobles instead?” He offers it as gently as he can. He’s already pushed more than he wants to, but sometimes she needs to be guided. Varric doesn’t want to set her course, but he likes to think that he can see when she’s veering from it, that he can help set her right again.

“No.” 

He’s disappointed, but only for a moment, until he looks up into her face. The dullness is gone from her gaze, and she has one brow raised. The Hawke he knows - the face she shows the world - is coming back. Varric doesn't know what he said that did it, or if he even played any part in it at all, but he's glad to see his friend again.

“Let’s bother some nobles by not going to bother some nobles,” she suggests. “Let’s stay in. We’ll have drinks, play cards, and let them all wonder what the Champion is up to that’s so much more important than them.”

“You’re sure?”

As if to answer, she tosses the crown again, this time a careful cast so that it lands on the bed without bouncing or rolling off. Then she turns away and heads out her bedroom door into the hallway.

“Let’s go see if there’s anything left from dinner in the kitchen.”

“After you, Hawke.”


End file.
